Jessica (Jess) Rosner

— Jess, thank you for sitting down with me and Village Voices. Would you tell me about yourself as an artist?

Happy to. I was raised in Manhattan. My parents were always interested in art and books. I absorbed so much from living with them, and from wandering around the city looking at everything. Entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art was pay what you want, so I’d go on a rainy day with a penny and for me and my friends it was an indoor playground. By the time I left, to get my B.F.A., I was familiar with everyone from Titian to Hockney. I never had much formal art training. I took classes at the 92nd St Y and the Art Students League. Except for a year at the High School of Art & Design, none of my schools emphasized art. I didn’t really learn to draw until I was in college.

After receiving my undergraduate degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art, I moved back to New York City. My first direction in the art world was geared towards crafts, specifically glass fused onto metal, enameling. I earned a living as a jeweler and exhibited at Spring Street Enamels Gallery. To find a less distracting home, I moved to Cranston. I thought I would stay a year, but that was 30 + years ago.

I worked with enamels until I realized that I was trying hard to make them look like drawings. Eventually, with some reluctance, I put away my kiln in deference to working on paper. I’d always like using a mechanical drawing pen for writing, sketches, and even complete drawings so my transition was eased. When I decided drawing was my primary practice, I treated the work more seriously. I developed two distinct bodies of graphic work: textual narrative, and purely abstract forms. In both, I like to show a density of marks constrained by the medium’s edges. Between these two genres I've found never-ending challenges and potential.

I have stayed in Rhode Island and will always have a love/hate relationship with this state and my city of Cranston. Still, it is home. It allows me to find time to work and to easily meet supportive curators and artists who have helped me refine my artwork, to aspire, and exhibit.

My beloved book club peeps, all of us Edgewood Village members.

I joined the Edgewood Village because I retired from my full-time position at the William Hall Library, where I’d worked for fifteen years. A patron there, Alisson Walsh, asked me if I’d consider running a book club for the Edgewood Villages. I’d facilitated the library book club and really enjoyed it, so, I said yes. I think our club is now in it’s third year.

— I appreciate you bringing me to your studio, especially as you’re actively producing artwork for an opening in Manhattan. Clearly, this is an important opportunity. Would you say you have a high-pressure career?

— From what I see underway on your worktable, there are surface similarities to past work. If I were to look at the work that you're producing for this exhibit, and work produced a year, two years ago, would I see the difference? Would I know the difference?

Yes and no. Last year, I went to a Boston gallery that I love, which exhibits contemporary work. And there was a young, lesser-known artist having a solo show, which...that's a big deal. She had small works set up as a series — each piece would be composed of nine drawings. I thought, Ah, I could do that. So I started working on a piece that would be made up of nine drawings, though it ended up being only eight. I worked on that, got it finished, each framed separately, but hung as one piece. It sold just like that! And so my New York gallerist, Valerie, said I want more of those, and she could have sold three of them. So easy to say! How soon can you do it? So, this was back in September. I said, realistically, I could have it for them on January 1. That felt doable. She said That's not going to work. She wanted it like November 1. I said I can't do that. Even if I had said to my husband You're in charge of everything, everything, I still couldn't. I just physically couldn't on that timeline.

But when Valerie and I were talking about this upcoming show, I asked, "What's your dream?" She wanted more of those. So I made more of those. They’re getting framed right now. I did three individual pieces, including a set of two and a set of four. But, you know, not everything works out as I hope. I might be following a line and dividing up the space so it will all work out. But there are times when they just don’t. Individually, they can be fine, but sitting together, they might not work out. Also, things happen, you know, I'll smudge something and just have to abandon it. We’re talking hours and hours of working time.

I've been doing this for a very long time, and getting a brick-and-mortar Gallery is one of those steps on the ladder that you try for. But it's not like the “old days” when there was a much more symbiotic relationship with “blue chip” artists, like David Hockney. There was a time when, if you were represented, you might be given a stipend so that you could just do your work. And the galleries worked closely with collectors and museums, all tied together. There are galleries that will say Alright, we're giving you this slot. Bring us whatever. And because it's so and so, and they know they’re guaranteed a certain quality of work, a certain vision of work, they don't have to worry about it. The artist is not going to suddenly say Oh, listen, I've decided to be an abstract expressionist, so take it or leave it.

I'm far from top tier, very far from the top tier, but I do have a certain fan base, and I have my gallery. Valerie knows what she can sell, so I let her worry about that. But I have to listen, I have to respect the fact that my gallery does not feel happy showing certain kinds of work. Do I not do that work? No, I still do that work because it's important to me.

— Let’s have a look at some more of your artwork, starting here, a retrospective exhibit from several years ago at AS220 Gallery in Providence.

Ed: The following words and pictures are excerpted from Jess’s website: jessicadeanerosner.com. Be sure to visit her web pages for the fullest exposition.

[After my mom died] I had to clean out the house of my parents and there was work I had done that hung on their walls from my years at college, and then my early years in Rhode Island, and on and on until recently. I brought some of the work home. Now it is mine again. This exhibit is part of the history of us.

[This is] my first foray using stream of conscious writing on my drawings. It helps that I have nice handwriting. I was taught by nuns. For a while I wanted to BE a nun. For a while I wanted to be a monk. I thought it would be nice to make jam and illuminate manuscripts. I’ve never made jam.

Manuscripts

When I made that first drawing I had not imagined it to be a series. I was trying to break away from a fairly rigid format and found myself making small marks across the page, from left to right. I surrounded each small mark with gold, and the result was reminiscent of an illuminated page.

The Manuscript Word series within this series is a narrative of a traumatic event in my life, in 2015. I was told I had to keep it a secret. Making these drawings was a way of putting the story in public, in a quiet way. It was a cathartic process that helped me to begin to heal.

Slinkies

So titled as the image reminds me of the slinkies of my childhood. I start with a circle made with either a template or a compass, and then follow the shape with hand-drawn lines. Though I have a lot of control you can see within these drawings my hand; wiggles that show unsteadiness, imperfection, and humanity.

Tally Drawings,

Abstract

Math Paper

I found a tiny, old (100 years) math instruction book in my favorite bookshop in Brooklyn, Spoonbill & Sugartown. I was feeling broke and it was $10.00. I kept picking it up, putting it back, carrying it while I looked around. Eventually I bought it.
I find books of math to be mysterious and beautiful. They inspire me. The book was ragged and falling apart. It was not valuable, to anyone but me.
There were questions; how many this and how many that, but some were complicated and old fashioned. There were questions about apples and trains and farms and miles, all about men. I wanted to make some work that was more spontaneous.

Text in Art

Outliers

These are pieces that might be left over from a series, or small experiments. Sometimes there is an idea I felt I had to get onto paper. Most recently they are drawings that incorporate my more familiar abstract drawings with elements of text and objects, relating to my thoughts about the large and small world we share.

Cloth Work

I started writing on cloth in 2012. I buy and collect doilies and handkerchiefs I find in antique shops and at yard sales. Though it seems an old-fashioned activity, the words I write with thread are a little edgy. I find I like this tension between what appears to be sweet and traditional, while the actual feelings behind the text tell a contemporary and less benign story.

Ulysses Project

Diary Project

I’ve kept diaries since 1975. They’re my written and visual records of thoughts, factoids, and personal dramas. When one of these diaries was lost, I was heartbroken. As weeks and then months passed, I assumed I’d never see it again, but fourteen years later a stranger returned it to me. Over the past four years I’ve used a copy of each page of the diary as the foundation for a new drawing. It’s been a journey backwards as well as forwards.

Jessica Rant,

Jessica’s website: jessicadeanerosner.com